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Skaudvile

The
Propp Ancestral Shtetl in Lithuania

Researched and Edited by Henry Propp

In general there was a remarkable amount of religious freedom in Lithuania.
Lithuania developed as a center for Jewish religion, education and scholarship,
however there was also religious intolerance and fierce anti-Semitism there
too. During most of the last two hundred years Lithuania has been under Russian
control, first under the Czars and then under communism. The Russian governments
implemented many pogroms which persecuted the entire Jewish population of the
Russian Empire, most of whom were living in the Cherta,
the Pale of the Settlements.

In 1995 a large group of Russian documents were found in the state archives
in both Kaunas and Vilnius, Lithuania. They are called reviskieshazki. These are lists of revision lists were
published by Avotaynu Monograph of "Jewish Vital
Records, Revision Lists, and other Jewish Holdings in the Lithuanian Archives.
These are a series of ten early Russian censuses of the Jews living in the Pale
of the Settlements. Czarist authorities in the late part of the 18th century
began them. The lists start in 1795 in eastern Lithuania and were organized by
family and listed by name and age. The Russians for conscription in the Russian
army and taxing the Jewish subjects used these revision lists. The lists are
not necessarily very accurate for the obvious reasons, but they are useful
tools for researched for additional information about our family in Skaudvile.
They list some of the Jewish population in many of the villages of what is now
Lithuania. We have obtained three of these lists for 1816, 1851 and 1912. The
list are actually two pages one page for male head of the household and any
other males residing within the household and a second page listing all of the
females of the same household. The lists are of limited use. This is because
they only list changes made after the main census, thus the name reviskie, meaning in English: revision.

The Old Wooden Shule

Later used as the cheder

In the August 14, 1816, Reviskie Shazki, there is listed a "Shimel
Hirschevich Probnovich" born 1765 listed with his sons: Efraim, Hirsh and Avram and on the female side with a wife, Rochel, and one daughter which can not be read from the
original document. These members lived in one household. The information passed
down from Louis Arne's grandparents that the first Propp in Skaudvile was
Shimon Propp and he had three sons: Efraim, Hirsh and Abe, along with four
daughters. Louis also said he only had information on four of the seven
children: Hirsch, Abe, Sara and Rivka. The 1816 Reviskie Shazki lists that Efraim departed Skaudvile in
1812 at the age of 24 years old. There is far too much information which
agrees to be only coincidental. These reviskieshazki are a primary vital record confirming that Shimon or
Shimel Propp did come to Skaudvile before 1811, the year of the previous
census. The 1816 census indicates that Shimel was in Skaudvile during the
previous census. Shimel is very common nickname for Shimon.

There was also the fear of conscription (1827 to 1867) in the Russian army
for the young Jewish men (12 years old) and boys. The duty in the army could be
very severe and could last up to twenty-five years or sometimes even more. Each
Jewish community through the Kahal, was given quotas. Even boys of eight or nine years old
were at times kidnapped by snatchers (khapers) who
were employed by the Kahal for purpose of filling
their quotas. The assignments were made to distant points in Russia and many of
the young men never saw their families and loved ones again. During their time
in the Russian service tremendous pressures were brought to bear on these young
men to convert to the Russian Orthodox religion.

When Czar Alexander II came to power he relaxed the conscription laws and
provided support to Jewish people of Russia. When his son, Czar Alexander III,
came to the Russian throne in 1881, all of the anti-Semitism, pogroms, and
mistreatment of the Jewish population greatly intensified and finally forced a
large scale emigration from Lithuania. However, there remained in Lithuania a
very large part of the Propp family, and 240,000 other Jewish people right up
until World War II. During the latter periods of the nineteenth century and
into the twentieth century the Propp family was spread throughout Lithuania,
Sweden, South Africa, Germany, and Russia rather than all living in the
Skaudvile area as in previous times.

Skaudvile is 22 km northeast of Tavrig in western
Lithuania. It is located on the road from Kaliningrad (Königsberg)
to Saint Petersburg and is situated along the Ancia
River. It has a population today of about 3,000 Lithuanians, and no Jewish
people. The town of Skaudvile began as a site for some roadside inns. At the
very end of the eighteenth century, younger Jewish settlers were attracted to
the area, where they established a small village. Every new Jewish settler was
called by the name of his original shtetl.

The Jewish community immediately began to develop and was fully organized by
1820. After several years, a small yeshiva (religious university) began to draw
people from the settlements. Some families would come to the area to seek
bridegrooms for their daughters from the yeshiva. A large Jewish community grew
and flourished in Skaudvile in the following years. In 1847 the Jewish
population of Skaudvile was 204, and in 1897 it was 1,012, or seventy-two percent
of the total village population. Just before the Holocaust there were 1,017
Jews, or sixty percent of the population. The town burned down in 1922, 1931,
and 1937 and it was rebuilt in 1938-39. Today it serves as a township seat,
with three houses of worship: Jewish, Roman Catholic, and Evangelical Lutheran.
There is a hospital and secondary school there. There were buildings in
Skaudvile which predated the period of Jewish settlement, and were built in the
very early part of the eighteenth century. The oldest building is a Catholic
Church which dates back to 1726. The shtetl is
described in The Books of Rabbi S. I. Scheinfeld:

"Skaudvile, like countless other shtetls, was
a poor community with a few shops and the usual assortment of small trades people and artisans, and a large proportion of men
who spent most of their days studying the Talmud or teaching, while their wives
often scraped up the family income."

The village became known throughout Europe as a village of
Torah scholars -- primarily of the Musarmovement, which was popular in this part of Lithuania -- as well as of
knowledgeable people of secular subjects, known as maskilim.
The mood and attitude of the shtetl is further
amplified in the forward written by Rabbi Shlapobersky and
the story concerning the life of Rabbi Shlapobersky.

In 1857, under Czar Nicholas I, the Russian government announced that all
the Jews who lived less than 50 versts (approximately
33 miles) from the Prussian border should leave the area. The Russian
government also told them to go to an established area further inside Russia.
They gave the Jewish people the opportunity to choose where they wanted to go.
Nineteen small communities of Jews in the area met and decided they were not
going to leave the area. The people of Skaudvile were among them. As it worked
out the Russian Government under the Czar relented on the requirement for Jews
to move only because it was not in their best interest. The Jewish people there
were Rabbis, teachers, merchants, small store owners, tradesmen and a few
farmers who raised corn, rice, grains, cows, horses, and chickens. One of the
principal commodities was the small and sturdy Samogitian
horse breed, well suited for work in the coal mines.

Tuesday was market day, and Skaukvil's was thought to be one of the largest
markets in the Zhammut (northwestern) region of
Lithuania. In 1871 there was a terrible famine, in which the Jewish people
suffered much worse than the general population of Lithuania. On the Shavuoth holiday of 1932, a big fire consumed half the
homes in Skaudvile. After that a purely Jewish firefighters' group was
organized, not only to fight fires but also to protect the Jewish population
from the Lithuanian gangs and hooligans. Later on, the firemen's group became
the shtetl'szelbst-shutz(self-protection group). In 1936 a blood libel again broke out against the
Jewish people in nearby Tavrig (Taurage).

Skaudvile is listed in Where Once We Walked, A guide to the Jewish
communities destroyed in the holocaust, and The Shtetl
Finder gazetteer. There is a plaque for Skaudvile in the Chamber of the
Holocaust, Mount Zion, Jerusalem, Israel and a Memorial Window in the United
States Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington, DC. It is also listed in YahadutLita,(Lithuanian Jewry). The book, Lithuanian Jewish Communities,
lists the Yizkor dates of the Nazi Massacres for
Skaudvile as 26 Tamuz 5701 (July 21, 1941) and 23
Elul 5701 (September 15, 1941). The town is also mentioned in a document which is
only known as "A Skaukviler", author
unknown, at the central archives, YadVashem in Volume III in the Guide to Unpublished Materials.

The Nazi's developed a new type of unit just prior to its invasion of the
Russian borders on the eastern front. The units were called Einsatzgruppen, these
were the first of the Nazi mobile killing units. In the German planning
sessions for Operation Barbarossa in March, 1941, Hilter
declared that the "Jewish-Bolshevik intelligentsia" would have to be
eliminated, and that these tasks could not be entrusted to the army. Einsatzgruppen A was assigned to Army Group North. The Einsatzgruppen was then broken down into smaller
operational units called Einsatzkommando. These units
operated independently but under guidelines of the Einsatzgruppen
mission, which was to murder all the Jewish people who lived in the overrun
areas. The Einsatzkommando 3 were
assigned to Lithuania, and were augmented in the field by indigenous groups of
Lithuanians, Estonians, Latvians and Ukrainians in the form of auxiliary
police. To reach as many villages and cities as fast as possible, the Einsatzgruppen moved closely on the heels of the advancing
German armies, trapping the large Jewish population centers before the victims
had a chance to discover their fate. It should be noted that the Lithuanians
took such a willingness and displayed so much passion
in the murdering of their fellow Jewish countrymen, that the Nazis used
Lithuanians to help kill Jews in all the overrun areas of Russia.

In 1940 the Jews of Lithuania were listening very closely to their radios.
They listened to the hate, the Jew-baiting, and how they were being blamed for
everything that was wrong with Germany and the world. They were listening to
what the Nazis were doing in other parts of Europe. The Jewish people of
Skaudvile and Lithuania were terribly frightened and scared. In May of 1940,
the Russians occupied Lithuania and reinforced the front lines between
Lithuania and Germany. There were miles and miles of trucks with Russian
soldiers, tanks, and big guns, which drove right through Skaudvile to the
border. The Jews there were very impressed with the awesome power of the
Russian government. They felt safer, and most were glad to see the Russians for
that reason. The Jewish people in Lithuania at this time had many restrictions
imposed by the Lithuanians. The Russians lifted some of the restrictions, and
made many Jewish people government officials. The Lithuanians intensely
resented these changes, and this may have contributed to the later brutalities
committed by some Lithuanians, but there had been years of anti-Semitism and
hate. The Jewish people had already lost most of their rights granted in 1920
when Lithuania was constituting its new government.

On Sunday morning, June 22, 1941, the German government implemented
"Operation Barbarossa", the invasion of the Soviet Union along the
Eastern front. The German Army Group, North crossed
the borders of Lithuania at Tilsit, East Prussia and
drove the 65 kilometers to Skaudvile, arriving in the afternoon of June 22.
(According to one eyewitness the date was June 24.) The Russian army did not in
any meaningful way oppose the Germans. Most just surrendered or quickly
retreated. The people of Skaudvile and the occupying Germans lived in a
relatively peaceful coexistence for the next two or three weeks. Then on July
16, the Lithuanian government, through some of its Lithuanian auxiliary police
in conjunction with the occupying German army and Einsatzkommando,
called all the people in Skaudvile together at the center of the town. This
included both the Jewish and non-Jewish men, women,
and children of the village. The Lithuanian paramilitary organization and the
German Einsatzkommando then separated Jews and
non-Jews. The non-Jews were all told to go home, leaving only the Jewish people
of Skaudvile standing there in the center of the village. While there the Jews
were harassed and tortured by many of the Lithuanians. They ripped the beard
from a Rabbi and then killed Reb Hillel Zilberg with shotgun. The famous Gaon
Rabbi Abraham Yitzchak Pearlman was dragged out of his home that Friday, and
after being tortured was brutally murdered. The Jewish men were then separated
from the women and children. The Lithuanians had to use force to make this
final separation and many of the people were kicked and beaten. Finally, when
all of the Jewish men were separated from their wives and their mothers and
their children, they were walked a few kilometers south into the Puzai Forest and shot until all were dead. Almost all of
the Jewish men of Skaudvile were murdered that day, only a very few were able
to escape. Later on July 21, some of the communal leaders, GaonReb Moshe Baruch Braude,
Benyamin Stein, Shmuel Eli Brett and Yaakov Dorfman were taken to the cemetery of Upyna
and brutally murdered together with Upyner Jews
including their Rabbi Yitzchak Yoffe. These same
procedures were used in 180 villages throughout Lithuania, and throughout the
rest of the Pale for the mass annihilation of the Jewish population. In 1941,
many of the Propp family who had remained in Europe, lived in village of Taurage (Tavrig) and cities of
Kaunas (Kovno), Lithuania and Königsberg,
Germany.

A few days after the men were taken to the Puzai
Forest and murdered, a long row of empty wagons
entered Skaudvile and stopped next to or in front of every Jewish home in the
village. The older people, the women and the children, who were Jewish, were
loaded on to the wagons along with what meager belongings they could bring. The
long line of wagons took them to the train station in Batakiai
(Batok). All during this period the Germans and
Lithuanians were still hunting down the few Jewish men who had escaped and were
in hiding. Most of the men were caught and taken to the village of Upyna and killed.

The elderly Jewish people, the women and children were kept prisoners for
some time at Batok. The stronger ones were made to
work for Lithuanian farmers in the area. They were guarded by the Lithuanian
auxiliary police and were constantly being harassed by Lithuanian gangs. Feige Schertz, sister of Leon Brett, and Mrs. Braude gave birth while there without any medical
assistance. In the middle part of September, some of the Lithuanian guards told
the prisoners there, that they too were to be killed soon. Many of the woman
tried to run and escape, but only a very few succeeded,
most were either recaptured or shot. Some did manage to escape. One women is still living in Israel and one is living in
Vilnius. On September 15, 1941, the remaining 800 Jews were taken to the Gryblaukis forest, twenty-two kilometers northeast of Tavrig, and murdered in a most hideous and cruel manner. In
the darkness of that cold night in the forest one could hear the moaning and
cries of "ShemaYisroel"
from the throats of the dying and martyred woman and children.

There were less than ten survivors of those who were in Skaudvile, Lithuania
when the German army entered the village. All the rest were massacred and are
buried in the following listed mass graves.

At least two Propps were fortunate to either not be in Skaudvile at the time
or escaped. First, Itzig Propp, who
was about thirty years old and lived with his Uncle Naftali
Propp, who owned a cloth store and had a large house on the square in
Skaudvile, met Leon Brett outside of Skaudvile on June 21 or 22, 1941.
Leon Brett had a new English bicycle and was riding it towards Russia to escape
the Germans. They traveled together for some time heading northeast toward Russia . One night as they approached the village of Kelm,
Lithuania they stopped and hid in what looked like an empty barn. The barn was
full of Jewish people who were huddled together and were trying to hide from
the Germans. The next day Itzig wanted to continue;
Leon felt more secure in the barn with the others. After another day Leon Brett
felt lonely and left the barn to catch up with Itzig.
All the people in that barn were found by the Lithuanians and murdered. Itzig and Leon arrived in Siauliai, Lithuania which is
about 75 kilometers north east of Skaudvile. Leon Brett stayed and after two
years of being a prisoner in the Shavli (Siauliai)
ghetto that was established there, finally escaped and joined the Jewish
partisan forces in Lithuania. Itzig Propp went on to
Russia and finally to Israel. Yankel Propp, who was
an esteemed scholar and teacher was not in Skaudvile at this time but was able
to flee into Russia. Yankel Propp was a very ardent
Zionist and a leader in the movement before the war. He too went on to Israel
and lived there. Yankel Propp lives in Apartment in
Jerusalem. After the war Itzig lived with a
Lithuanian family in Skaudvile and died in 1994 in Tavrig.
The Propp family in Skaudvile prior to World War II was said to be a prominent
and well known family in the area*.

*Included are first hand accounts
by Mr. Leon Brett, ASkaudvilian
and Holocaust survivor, who now lives in Johnstown, Pennsylvania.

A List of the Mass Burial Sites for
the Jewish People of Skaudvile, Lithuania

ThePuzai
Forest four kilometers from Skaudvile. Three hundred men are buried
here. They were murdered on July 15, 1941.

TheGryblaukis
Forest in Batakiai,
twenty-two kilometers north-east of Tavrig on
the Tavrig-Skaudvile road. One thousand Eight
Hundred women and children are buried here They
were murdered September 21, 1941.

The Town of Upyna, Within the Jewish Cemetery,
there are one hundred victims buried there. They were murdered in the
latter part June in 1941

In Avraham Tory's book: Surviving the
Holocaust, TheKovno Ghetto
Diary, it is mentioned that in August of 1942: "Two sisters had
arrived in the Ghetto from Skaudvile. They were saved by a miracle. Until now
they had been hiding in peasant houses." That was about one year after
Skaudvile and those Jewish people left had been destroyed, by the Nazis. Very
few Jews escaped the annihilation of Skaudvile or Lithuania. Only 6,000 to
7,000 survived out of the over 240,000 Jewish people who lived in Lithuania
before the war.

That was about one year after Skaudvile and those Jewish people left had
been destroyed, by the Nazi's. Very few Jews escaped the annihilation of
Skaudvile or Lithuania. Only 6,000 to 7,000 survived out of the over 160,000
Jewish people who lived in Lithuania before the war.

Prior to the war, eighty percent of the youth were affiliated with Zionist
organizations. Many joined pioneer training and made Aliyah
to EretzYisrael. Others
immigrated to the United States, Sweden, Norway, South Africa, South America
and many other countries.

Almost every member of the community belonged to a society for Torah study,
such as Mishnayot, Chayei
Adam, MenorotHamaor, TiferotBachurim, or Shas, led by Leibchik,
the clock maker, YosefYavetz
and Benyamin Stein. Their was also a "Daf" (daily-page) for scholars, led by Hirsh Lifshitz, Moshe-Baruch Braude and
Eliezer Fein. There was a Jewish Peoples Bank, which
was administered by Meier Krom and there was a BeitMidrash, founded in
5626/1866 and a Synagogue. The charitable organizations included ChevraKadisha, LechemAniim, and BikurHolim.

Among the earliest rabbis in the village of Skaudvile were Rabbi Moshe
Lurie, who served between 1820 and 1830. Rabbi Lurie died about 1835. He was
the son of Rabbi Todres Ben Orvm Lurie. Rabbi Todres
passed away in 1818. Later came Rabbi Moshe Ben Lazer
who died in 1889. His son Rabbi Eliyahu-Yazber-Ber came to Skaudvile by 1913.
Before this, he was in Yanashouk. Between the two
World Wars, when Lithuania was an independent country, there were two small
Yeshivas in Skaudvile. They were supervised by Rabbi Shmuel
Sachs, Rabbi Eliyahu-Dovid Katz, and Rabbi Yaakov
Levy. Later Rabbi Perlman also supervised the Yeshiva.

Dr. Moshe Zilberg,
who was born in 1900, became the Chief Judge of the High Court of
Jerusalem. Dr. Zilberg was a lecturer at the
Hebrew University and he was also an author. He wrote in the Jerusalem
press about the justice system.

Simon Fishman was born in
1878. His maternal grandmother was Rivka
Prop Davidzon, daughter of Shimel
Probnovich. He came to the United States at the age of 13 in 1892
with his mother and father. He started from Tennessee as a peddler at a
very young age and traveling in Oklahoma and Texas selling his wares such
as pins and needles from a donkey's back. He later moved to Sidney,
Nebraska and opened a mercantile store. He served as Mayor of Sidney.
Simon Fishman then moved to Tribune, Kansas and became a world famous
agriculturist, who introduced wheat farming to western Kansas. Mr. Fishman
built the first grain elevator in Tribune, Kansas and in 1926 shipped one
million tons of wheat from there, when ten years prior not one grain of
wheat was shipped from western Kansas. In 1933 he became a State Senator
for Kansas. He was important in establishing the AAA under the Franklin D.
Roosevelt administration during the great depression of the 1930's and was
good friends of Herbert Wallace and Will Rogers. Mr. Fishman passed away
in Denver, Colorado in 1956.

Rabbi Shard-Feul Shapiro was born in 1900. He attended and taught
in a Yeshiva in Belgium. He also studied at Telz
and other Yeshivas throughout Lithuania. Rabbi Shapiro was murdered in a
Nazi concentration camp in 1940.

Rabbi Chaim
Meier Greenberg was a renowned Talmud scholar. He taught in Yeshivas
throughout Lithuania. His father, Moshe-Zvi,
said that he was the "Skaudvilin of the
time" on Jewish matters.

Rabbi Shule-Yitzchak
(Solomon Isaac) Sheinfeld was born in 1860. In
1891 he immigrated to the United States. A few years later he became a
Rabbi in Louisville, Kentucky. He then moved to Milwaukee, Wisconsin and
worked there for over 40 years. He was descended from a family that has
contributed many scholars and spiritual leaders to the world. His father,
Aaron Scheinfeld was a Talmudic scholar, maskil and the Governmental Rabbi of Skaudvile, in
charge of recording births, weddings, deaths, and other legal documents.
Another of Rabbi Sheinfeld's ancestors was the
distinguished Rabbi of the seventeenth century, ZebiHirshe Ashkenazi better known as ChachamZevi. Rabbi Seinfeld
passed away in Milwaukee in 1943.

Rabbi Abraham Yitzchak
Perlman was born in 1913 in Telz, a small
village in Lithuania. Later Rabbi Perlman became a very elite scholar and
writer. He was thirteen, when he remarkably wrote a Torah in 1926 at the
distinguished Slabodka Yeshiva located in a
suburb of Kovno, (Kaunas), Lithuania.

Telz
Yeshiva was founded in 1881. It remained open until World War II, when the
surviving faculty founded the Telzer Rabbinical
College in Cleveland, Ohio. Rabbi Chaim Stein
from Skaudvile became a Mashgiach there. Rabbi
Stein still lives in Cleveland and in 1991 he visited Lithuania and
Skaudvile. He told me that there are no Jewish people living in Skaudvile
anymore, but that the mass grave sites of the Jewish people, who were
murdered there, are being maintained by the Lithuanian Government.

The
New Stone Shule(build about 1921

Sources

This information was compiled from various books, magazines and papers from Hebrew,
Yiddish, English, and Lithuanian sources. Also from first hand spoken
commentary:

The Books of Rabbi S. I. Scheinfeld, Rabbi Scheinfeld,
translated from Hebrew by Dr. David Kuselwitz
with an introduction by AmramScheinfeld, (Chicago: The Scheinfeld
Foundation, 1977)

The Jewish Community Blue
Book of Milwaukee and Wisconsin (Milwaukee: The Wisconsin Jewish
Chronicle, 1924)

Shaukviler,"
name unknown, document number M-1/E1235/1201, at The Central Archives, YadVashem, Jerusalem,
Israel. (Translated from Yiddish for the author by Leo Kram,
Flushing, New York, August 1991.) Reference to the document is contained
in the "Guide to Unpublished Materials of the Holocaust Period, n
Volume III, Jerusalem: YadVashem, 1975, 341.